Wikipedia Reflections, Essay Example

The Wikipedia research project was very interesting for our group because it provided us a different viewpoint of the website that most of us have never seen.  This was my first time using the website, so I had no idea what to expect or how to edit information.  Overall, this was a very positive experience working on the project.  I was in charge of researching the Real Estate section for Wikipedia, and found that there is an abundance of information that is readily available for anyone to retrieve at any time.

I also learned many important aspects about Wikipedia that I did not know previously.  The information can easily be edited by any person on the web by simply clicking a link to change what is written on each Wiki page.  However, everything needs to be properly cited and the information is not changed if it is not completely accurate.  The web managers closely monitor the change requests and do not implement them until all sources of the information can be verified to provide legitimacy and accuracy to the site and to the topic.  It was very interesting searching for different input sources to put into the web site because at times the legitimacy of the information was questionable, so we needed to find more verifiable sources.  At times this was an easy task, and at other times it was very difficult.  This project really tested our skills at searching the web.

My experience working with the group was very positive.  I enjoyed getting to know different people and their ideas.  Each person had something different to contribute to the project, so we each were able to work together as a team.  I have worked in other group projects that the group members had many conflicts or did not work well together, but this was not the case in this project.  Without each of us interacting together and supporting each other when we had problems, we never would have been able to do the quality of work that we were able to on the Wikipedia project.  Not only did I learn about the many different aspects of Wikipedia, but I also learned about teamwork and how beneficial group projects can be if we all work together.